All information in
this article is for educational purposes only.It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure
of any disease or health condition.

Caution
with vitamin A.If possible, do not take extra vitamin A during
pregnancy.It is slightly toxic
for the fetus.The amount of
vitamin A in the standard nutritional balancing programs is fine, however.

I.
ABOUT VITAMINS IN GENERAL

What is a
vitamin?Vitamins are
substances that are NOT proteins, starches, sugarsor fats.Yet
they are absolutely required for health.

In general, vitamins must come from our food and are not manufactured
inside the body to a great extent.

Where did
the word “vitamin” come from?An American scientist, Dr. Casimir
Funk, early in the twentieth century, coined the term vitamin as a contraction
and combination of the words vital and amines.Amines are a type of chemical.Not all vitamins are amines, but the word remains to
describe these vital nutrients found in our food.

How are
vitamins classified?

1. Water
soluble or fat soluble.Vitamins are often classified as either
water-soluble or fat-soluble.This
has to do with the foods in which they are found, and the nature of the vitamin
itself.

The
water-soluble vitamins.These are mainly the B-complex vitamins
and vitamin C.

The
fat-soluble vitamins.These include vitamins A, D, E and K.

2. Letter
of the alphabet.For simplicity, vitamins are assigned a
letter of the alphabet.Each
vitamin also has a technical name that is the name of the chemical formula.

The letter does not necessarily have to do with when it was
discovered.So there are vitamins
A, B, C, D, E, F, and perhaps others.

When were
most vitamins discovered, and why? Most
vitamins were discovered between 1850 and 1950.This was a time when biochemistry was a new science and
certain analytical tools such as mass spectrometers were invented that allowed
scientists to investigate and understand chemical compounds much easier.

II.
VITAMIN A

One of the most important and most amazing of the vitamins is vitamin
A.It is required for the immune
response, and for the health of the skin and mucus membranes, which are both
part of the immune system of the body.

Discovery.As early as 1817, scientists noticed
that malnourished dogs developed corneal ulcers and blindness, and had a
shorter lifespan, but they did not know why.

In
1912, an English biochemist, Frederick Gowland Hopkins, found unknown factors present
in milk that were required to aid growth in rats.Dr. Hopkins was later awarded the Nobel Prize (in 1929) for
this discovery.

In 1917, Elmer McCollum from the
University of Wisconsin–Madison along with Lafayette Mendel and Thomas
Burr Osborne from Yale University discovered one of these substances while
researching the role of dietary fats.

In 1918, these “accessory factors”
were described as “fat soluble” and in 1920, they were referred to as vitamin
A.

A
fat-soluble vitamin.Vitamin A is one of the fat-soluble
vitamins.This means it is found
usually in fatty foods.It is also
best absorbed with other fatty foods such as eggs, meats and butter.It was one of the first vital nutrients
to be discovered about 100 years ago, and hence it was called vitamin A.

FORMS
OF VITAMIN A

These are:

1.
Natural pre-formed vitamin A.This is also called retinol, and is
found mainly in fish oils, including cod liver oil.It is considered the best-utilized form of vitamin A.

2.
Semi-synthetic pre-formed vitamin A. This is sold as a supplement, and its
technical name is retinyl palmitate.It is not quite as active or strong as the natural vitamin A, and it is
slightly toxic.However, it can be
used instead of the natural vitamin A from fish oils.

3. Beta-carotene.
Our bodies can convert some beta-carotene to the active form
of vitamin A.However, if the
thyroid gland is not working well (which is very common today, especially among
women), then the conversion does not occur adequately.

Unfortunately, sometimes beta-carotene is labeled as vitamin A.This is somewhat deceptive because it
is not technically vitamin A.When
buying vitamin A, I prefer the pre-formed vitamin A because I know it will work
and does not require conversion inside the body to vitamin A.

A very
yang vitamin.This is important, although it may
sound esoteric.Vitamin A, because
it is fat-soluble and derived mainly from animal sources, is a more yang
vitamin.These are greatly needed
today to balance the yin bodies.

FUNCTIONS
OF VITAMIN A

Vitamin A is needed for vision, for the immune response, to strengthen
the skin and mucous membranes, to regulate cell growth and bone metabolism, and
is involved in hormone synthesis.However, this is just the beginning of the functions of vitamin A.

Vitamin
A has other, more subtle functions, according to some authors.It helps the brain process information,
for example.It is also needed in
every cell for basic life functions such as respiration and energy
production.

If vitamin A is low in the body, a person’s energy level will suffer,
infections develop more easily, and cancer can occur more easily.Many other health problems also occur
more often, from blindness to respiratory problems and others.In fact, vitamin A deficiency is still
the leading cause of blindness on earth today.

Deficiency
of vitamin A also causes night blindness, which is not really blindness but is
difficulty seeing in the dark.It
also increases the risk for cardiovascular disease, macular degeneration,
cataracts, osteoporosis, diarrheal diseases and many viral illnesses.

SOURCES
OF VITAMIN A

The
sources of vitamin A can be divided into sources of pre-formed vitamin A and
sources of beta-carotene and other carotenes, which are precursor substances
that the body can often convert to true vitamin A.

Sources of
pre-formed vitamin A.These
are animal-based foods including some fish oils, including cod liver oil,
sardine oil and salmon oil.Others
are meats, eggs, cheeses, yogurt, kefir, and chicken, to some degree.Animals help convert the carotenes to
the pre-formed vitamin A so that we don’t have to do it.

Sources of
beta-carotene and other carotenes include most dark green, orange, red and
yellow vegetables such as Swiss chard, carrots, peppers and other
vegetables.Fruits have a little
of the carotenes.However, fruit
is too yin so I do not recommend eating much or any of it today.

Source
of retinyl palmitate.This is the synthetic vitamin A.It is only found in pill form in health
food stores and other markets.

REASONS
WHY MOST PEOPLE ARE LOW IN VITAMIN A

Millions
of people on earth are deficient in vitamin A.This causes many health problems for people, and this
deficiency is largely overlooked by most doctors.The three reasons for the deficiency are:

1. Low
intake.This
is a major reason for low levels of vitamin A.This is particularly serious in some poorer nations where
eggs, butter, fish and meat are not readily available.However, it also occurs in
America and in Europe when people live on poor quality food or do not eat
enough vegetables, for example.

Cooking
vegetables.Carotenes are more available from
cooked vegetables than from raw ones that are harder to digest.

Vegetarian
or semi-vegetarian diets.These are particularly low in
pre-formed vitamin A, since the main sources of vitamin A are not included in
these diets, such as meats, eggs, fish and dairy products including milk,
cheese, yogurt, and kefir.

Also,Most of the time, these diets are too low in iodine and other substances
needed for the thyroid gland.As a
result, many vegetarians cannot convert the vegetarian sources of carotenes
such as red, orange and yellow vegetables and some fruits, to the active form
of vitamin A.This compounds their
deficiency of vitamin A and shortens their lifespans.

4. Poor
digestion or absorption of vitamin A. Some people may not absorb adequate
carotenes from the diet due to digestive problems.

Digestive problems that may limit the absorption of vitamin A include low
digestive enzyme production and secretion, hidden infections, sensitivity to
gluten, wheat or other foods, parasitic infections, and abnormal gut
flora.These are all common today.

3.
Impaired conversion of carotenes to the active form of vitamin A.Reasons for this are:

A. Low
thyroid activity.Adequate thyroid hormonal activity is needed to
convert carotenes to the active form of vitamin A. Most people today have low thyroid activity.

This is due to copper and mercury toxicity, and due to the presence of
thyroid antagonists in the environment such as bromides, fluorides and
chlorides.These interfere with
the activity of the thyroid gland in most people.

Also, most diets are low in iodine that is needed to oppose the
thyroid antagonists.

B. Other.Some
people with adequate thyroid activity also seem to have difficulty converting
the carotenes to the active form of vitamin A.

In one study, up to 47% of British women were unable to adequately
convert beta-carotene to vitamin A.The problem may be even worse in some populations.

HOW
TO INCREASE YOUR VITAMIN A INTAKE

1. Eat some animal protein daily.Sardines and butter are very good sources.

2. Eat plenty of cooked vegetables each day.

3. Take a supplement of kelp to provide plenty of iodine.Other iodine supplements may work, but
kelp is a natural food and provides many other minerals along with iodine that
almost everyone needs.

4. You may also take a supplement of pre-formed vitamin A, about
10,000 iu daily.Beta-carotene
supplements should not be needed if you eat plenty of cooked vegetables
daily.Cod liver oil also provides
plenty of vitamin A

THE
USE OF HIGH-DOSE VITAMIN A AS THERAPY FOR INFECTIONS AND FOR CANCER PREVENTION
OR CORRECTION

Vitamin
A in higher doses can be used as an infection remedy.For bladder infections, colds, influenza and many other
infections, vitamin A in doses of up to 20,000 iu daily for adults can be
extremely helpful.

This is often much more effective than taking vitamin C, a much more
popular natural remedy, but one which is very yin so it can upset body
chemistry in subtle ways.

For
cancer prevention and correction, vitamin A is also helpful, perhaps because it
strengthens the immune response.Adding 10,000 iu daily or more may help with this.

I
always suggest that vitamin A supplements should be the pre-formed vitamin A,
not beta-carotene because many people have trouble converting carotenes to the
active form of vitamin A.

SYNERGY
BETWEEN ZINC AND VITAMIN A

Dr.
Paul Eck pointed out that a strong synergistic relationship exists between
vitamin A and zinc.Both lower
sodium in the mineral balancing system of the body used in nutritional
balancing science.

To a limited degree, they are interchangeable, meaning that zinc and
vitamin A can be substituted for one another to a limited degree, although this
may sound unusual.

Also,
both are needed for proper immune response and the functioning of the skin,
mucous membranes, energy production, vision, hormone production and other
functions.Also, both are needed
for the bones, for proper growth and development, and to prevent some birth
defects.Therefore, this is an
interesting synergism between a vitamin and a mineral.There are other such synergisms, such
as between manganese and vitamin B1.

OVERDOSING
ON VITAMIN A

It
is possible to overdose on vitamin A, although in my experience it is very
rare.Most people are deficient,
in fact.Older textbooks suggested
that one would need 300,000 iu of vitamin A daily for months to overdose on
it.Newer books suggest that a
lower dose is too much, especially during pregnancy.

Symptoms
of vitamin A overdose.Vitamin A can build up in the liver and cause
symptoms such as reddening of the skin, rashes and perhaps an occasional birth
defect.The solution if symptoms
occur is simply to reduce one’s intake of pre-formed vitamin A.

Overdosing
on carotenes does not cause vitamin A excess.The body will simply not convert the extra carotenes into
vitamin A.